The crowd at the yellow gate saw Gary Robbins running toward them. Some of them cheered instinctively, though it was not necessarily something to cheer about. Robbins, of North Vancouver, was approaching the finish line from the wrong direction.

After running nearly 160 kilometres for almost three days straight through the woods in Tennessee, Robbins was expected to become one of the few people, and the only Canadian, to ever finish the storied Barkley Marathons on Monday.

“I was momentarily confused,” says Gary Cantrell, the founder of the race, who is better known in ultramarathon circles as Lazarus Lake.

At first, Cantrell thought Robbins was coming at the yellow gate from the wrong direction because he had dropped out of the race. But then, why would he be running so hard?

“It dawned on me that he had to have taken a wrong turn,” Cantrell said.

Then I realized my error and I knew I didn’t have enough time to come back over the mountain

Robbins reached the yellow gate and collapsed. He was speaking in high-pitched bursts between breaths, though most of it was incomprehensible.

“I took the wrong side of the mountain in the fog,” Robbins can be heard saying in video posted by Canadian Running Magazine. He lay on the road with his knees tucked to his belly, hands on his face. “I had to swim the river,” he said.

Robbins’ wife crouched down and put her hand on his shoulder. She looked up at Cantrell, who was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a canvas riding jacket. The spectators were silent.

Robbins showed Cantrell a rain-soaked map and pointed out where he veered off course.

“You turned right instead of left?” Cantrell said.

“Yeah,” Robbins said. “And then I realized my error and I knew I didn’t have enough time to come back over the mountain.”

After the discussion, it was clear that Robbins’ mistake meant he had not finished the race — running two miles short of the 100 mile (160 kilometre) total. Even if he hadn’t veered off course, he had still reached the gate six seconds over the 60-hour limit.

A bugler played taps to mark Robbins’ failure — one of the many traditions of this strange, three-decade-old race.

“The bugler cried when he had to play,” Cantrell said. “A lot of people had something in their eye.

“But I guess without those moments of tragedy you can’t have the great exaltation when it all works out.”

Michael Doyle

Since it started in 1986, the Barkley has earned a reputation as one of the most gruelling trail runs in the world. It is five loops of a 20-mile (32-kilometre) course in Frozen Head State Park near Wartburg, Tenn., navigating by map and compass through saw briars and climbing and sliding down hills with names like Testicle Spectacle.

There is often no discernible trail. This year, the course had more than 20,000 metres of uphill climb, said Cantrell, the race director. The checkpoints are just books tucked in the woods. Each runner has to rip a page from each of the 13 books to prove they ran the entire course. One used this year was a self-help book titled “There Is Nothing Wrong with You” — which Cantrell liked, because “there was something wrong with every person that got a page out of that book.”

The Barkley takes 40 participants a year, chosen through a secretive application process. It starts at odd times, marked not by a starter gun but by Cantrell lighting a cigarette at the iconic yellow gate. (This year, it started on Saturday at 1:42 a.m., Canadian Running reported.) Most don’t make it past the first three loops, which are known as the “fun run.” Only 15 people in the race’s history have completed the whole thing, including John Kelly, who finished roughly 30 minutes before Robbins.

“I did not finish The Barkley Marathons, and that is no one’s fault but my own,” Robbins wrote in a blog post on his website Tuesday.

“That one fatal error with just over two miles to go haunts me.”

It was Robbins’ second attempt — after he dropped out in the final loop last year, reporting that he was delusional and seeing faces on the leaves of trees. On Monday, he collected a page from the last book on the course and expected to hit a trail, turn left and be able to reach the finish with a few minutes to spare.

“I was going to make it,” he wrote.

There was a dense fog on the course. He took a bearing with his compass, hit the trail but was “a few degrees off,” he wrote. As he continued, he was anticipating coming to row of stone columns that act like stepping stones along an eroded ridge — called the “pillars of death.”

That one fatal error with just over two miles to go haunts me

“Something didn’t feel right though,” he wrote. He ran faster, wondering where the pillars were. “I ripped open my map and the gravity of things hit me. I did not have enough time left to correct my mistake by going up and over the mountain again.” If he went back, he would have finished five minutes past the 60-hour mark and lost. “Here’s the thing though,” Robbins wrote, “that’s exactly what I should have done, and the one regret I have after now sleeping is not doing just that.

“The Barkley Marathons is not an orienteering style race. You do not get to select the route that best favours you between books. You need to navigate between books, off trail, but in a very specific direction of travel. My finish, even if it were 6 seconds faster would not have counted. I put (Cantrell) and the race in a precarious situation and in hindsight I’m glad I was six seconds over so that we didn’t have to discuss the validity of my finish.”

Robbins’ arrival at the finish line caused confusion, especially since he had all 13 book pages in a plastic bag. At one point, Cantrell was asked whether Robbins arrived in time. He said no — which spiralled into a narrative that a runner had come within seconds of completing the race. On Tuesday, Cantrell released a statement, in free verse, to clarify:

i wish i had never said 6 seconds…

gary had just come in after having run off course and missing the last 2 miles of the barkley. that is, of course, not a finish.

i do, however, always record when runners come in, whether they are finishing a loop, or not. so, i had looked at the watch, even tho there was no possibility that he would be counted as a finisher.

so, when someone asked if he had gotten in before the limit; i foolishly answered.

i never expected the story to somehow become that he had missed the time limit by 6 seconds. he failed to complete the course by 2 miles. the time, in that situation, is meaningless.

i hate it, because this tale perpetuates the myth that the barkley does not have a course. the barkley is a footrace. it is not an orienteering contest, nor a scavenger hunt. the books are nothing more than unmanned checkpoints.

the boston marathon has checkpoints. and you have to show up at all of them or you can be disqualified…

that does not mean you are allowed to follow any route you choose between checkpoints.

now, the class with which gary handled this terrible disappoinment at the end of a truly magnificent performance… that was exceptional, and is, in and of itself, a remarkable achievement.

but he did not miss the time limit by 6 seconds. he failed to complete the barkley by 2 miles.